Saturday, January 9, 2016

To Believe or Not To Believe

I often wonder why Christian preach their belief with atheists like me. In the first place, preaching is only effective to people with the same wavelength (same religious belief, same world-view). Now, here’s an example courtesy of a certain Joerelson Jonem Ng.

According to his bluster, an atheist choose to become an atheist – so, did I choose to be an atheist? Well… it depends on how you will look at it. Between blind faith and rationality, yes I choose the later. Belief in a god depends primarily of accepting dogmas, doctrines and ignorance – stuffed with guilt and fear. On the other hand, rationality works on inquisitive mind and critical thoughts.

Being naturally inquisitive (Yes, humans are thinking animals) it is natural for a Homo sapiens sapiens to become doubtful from so-called “revelations.” Knowledge are acquired by careful observations, yet sometimes preconceived beliefs and ideas comes in – thus we have religious beliefs and this includes the belief on a god or gods.

Eschatology is a part of theology… OK, if you are not familiar with the word, it’s all about the so-called End Times. What is funny about this is that other religions have their own versions of the so-called End Times. What Joerelson Jonem Ng is telling in his Facebook post is his version of how things will end. Naturally, he’s a Christian so his eschatology is Christian-based. However, as I already said, different religions has their own version. For example, in Islam they believed that on Judgement Day, Christians (like Joerelson Jonem Ng) will be thrown in hell because he worshipped Jesus as a god and he didn’t accepted Muhammad as the last prophet. So, in the eyes of a Muslim, Joerelson Jonem Ng here is very, very, very wrong for choosing Christianity – déjà vu?

And what makes his preaching ineffective?

Well, since there are 8 major religions and almost 3,000+ gods in this planet, it would be impossible to agree which eschatology is right, which bring us to his first statement “God is True.”

According to Joerelson Jonem Ng “God is True, He exists!” Is he talking about his concept of god? I dunno, he did not elaborate his statement. It’s just an empty declaration. To be “true” means it is consistent with fact or reality – yet again, in philosophy, truth can be a little bit tricky.

So when he declared that his god is true, is he talking about his world-view, his religious belief, his philosophy in life? What does he mean by the word “true?” Is it his personal idea, his opinion? Judging by these different factors – his “truth” may not be the “truth” to another person. No, I’m not a relativist, but as I always observed, religious truth is relative.

So, how “true” is his “true?”

I think it would be better for Joerelson Jonem Ng to prove his statement about his god first before forcing his personal belief to a rational person. Believing is something personal and yes, we can choose whether to believe or not to believe – that’s why humans have brains and the ability to think in the first place.